


Ouroboros

by Kantayra



Series: The Masters and Doctors in the Matrix [12]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Afterlife, Beards (Facial Hair), Bickering, Flirting, Fluff, Frottage, M/M, Origin Story, POV Alternating, Time War (Doctor Who), World Domination, World Domination as Flirting, World Domination as Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:55:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24806557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: In life, the War Doctor, at the crux of the Time War, finally felt the pangs of solitude enough to overcome his inhibitions and admit what he’d trulywantedall his lives.In the afterlife, he remained as stubborn and commitment-phobic as always. Good thing the War Master had spent all his lives learning the patience to play the long game.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), The War Doctor/The War Master (Jacobi)
Series: The Masters and Doctors in the Matrix [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592659
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	Ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

> Makes references to the War Doctor & War Master audios, but doesn't require any knowledge of them.
> 
> This is my first attempt at writing something substantial between a Doctor and Master who have not been seen to meet in canon (yet!), but their story is what sets this whole series in motion, so I wanted to explore that.

_Life._

Gallifrey’s greatest monster stared dispassionately at the latest casualty list.

Thousands dead, an entire Battle-TARDIS fleet lost, innocents slaughtered, the Cruciform taken, and the Dalek army headed straight for Gallifrey. After a time, the sheer number of horrors became numbing, nothing more than statistics, people transformed to trivialities due to the atrocities of war.

Except…

“Did you know any of them?” The question came from a nameless soldier, who’d just stepped back from the list with a look of relief on her face. Apparently whomever she worried for had lived to see another day, although with the way things were going, it might only be one other.

“Know them?” Gallifrey’s greatest monster reached out to trace the name of Gallifrey’s second-greatest monster on the list, where it held a place of high honour, ironically enough. The Prydonians insisted on being top-of-the-list, largest font size, looking down on the rest of the populace from above, even in death. Without that, he might not even have noticed the name.

“I’m sorry,” the soldier said. “Have you lost someone close?” She reached out to place a hand on his arm. Young, naïve, still full of hope, probably not even a full Academy graduate: the last class had all been shunted into the military when the Academy closed, in order to facilitate their deaths more efficiently.

He shook off her arm sharply, and she took a wary step back. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped at her. “I don’t _have_ someone close,” he insisted, and stalked away.

***

_Afterlife._

Someone was close, in the dark.

All the Master’s senses went immediately on high alert although, outwardly, he kept all his biomechanical functions imitating sound sleep. Someone with less honed predatory instincts wouldn’t have detected the intruder: they were silent, wary, and clever. Not so much as a breath stirred the air, nor did the brush of fabric sound throughout the Master’s bedroom.

Inwardly, the Master felt a mental sigh come on. He held a certain amount of clout in the Matrix – most of him were somewhat in awe of him for his achievements during the Time War – but his selves were still prone to capriciousness, violence, and extreme boredom. Apparently, one of him had decided to try their luck against him, as one of them always inevitably did. After all, there was no one else to torment in this cold, sterile afterlife.

The Master _felt_ the intruder move. Subtly, he shifted onto his side, still feigning sleep, curling one hand under the pillow where he’d just materialised his laser screwdriver.

The intruder stepped closer. The Master could sense the impressive presence of mind now. It must’ve been one of his youngest selves: his older selves had better telepathic shields. This young fool should’ve known better than to attack a Master so senior in skill. Nevertheless, the Master held his ground, let the intruder get within range…

He felt the brush of knuckles against his cheek, a caress just along the line of his beard, and then he struck, cobra-quick.

His attacker dodged at just the right moment, escaping the blinding flash of the laser that illumined the pitch-black for one instant by twisting to one side and making a run for it. Of course, the attacker would know him as well as he knew himself and had anticipated the surprise counterattack; such was the side-effect of attacking himself.

Fortunately, the Master always had a back-up plan or ten.

The Master had assumed that the intruder would run for the door to his room, as the only viable means of escape. He’d booby-trapped _that_ ahead of time, well enough to send anyone spasming to the ground in fits of convulsions. The Master flicked on the stun field around the front door via the switch on the night-stand.

Strangely enough, though, the intruder ran in the _opposite_ direction: back further into his suite, toward the cupboard door. His younger self must have been even more of an idiot than he’d remembered; he’d now effectively trapped himself.

The Master lunged after the intruder and tackled him to the ground just outside the cupboard door. The two of them tangled and wrestled against each for a good minute, their grunts breaking the eerie silence of the Matrix construct, and their blows landing uselessly in this environment that allowed no real pain or injury.

In such a battle, pinning one’s opponent was the only sure way to victory, and fortunately the Master had both size and strength in advantage of his foe. Quite inexplicably, the intruder seemed to have the edge when it came to skill, which was not physically possible given that he must’ve been a younger Master, but the Master brushed that off as dumb luck. After all, he was quite distracted trying to wrangle his foe beneath him.

“Next time,” he informed himself, once he’d finally emerged as the clear victor, his attacker’s body trapped under his weight and hands pinned thoroughly on either side of his head, “pick on someone your own size. Or better yet: much smaller.”

The Time Lord beneath him had been panting deeply at their shared exertions, but his breath stilled at the Master’s words. The Master could feel the hearts in the chest beneath him suddenly pounding frantically.

There was something about that: the feel of this body beneath him, and the scent of its fear, and the thu-thu-thump-thump of its hearts. Suddenly, the Master found himself achingly hard and hopelessly confused.

With a thought, he turned on his room’s lights.

His captive squinted at the sudden brightness, and then glared up at him defiantly.

The Master’s breath caught.

The intruder wasn’t him. His current incarnation had never laid eyes on this face. But, oh, he recognised it _immediately_.

He sat back, stunned at the impossibility of the beautiful, _wonderful_ sight before him. He certainly could not believe it to be reality but nor could he believe it was a dream, because his dreams were never this kind to him.

His enemy – his perfect, brilliant, _inspired_ enemy – took advantage of his loss of composure to kick him off and run for the cupboard door.

That snapped the Master out of his stupor, and he ran after the apparition, opened the door where the intruder had just slammed it shut behind him, and—

Nothing.

It was just some spare linens.

The Master gulped and rubbed a shaky hand over the back of his neck as he considered the folded sheets before him. He was quite mad; he knew that. But he could still feel the heat of the body that had been beneath him, could taste the sweetness of victory on his tongue, and his veins hummed with a buzz of pent-up energy he hadn’t felt since he’d last tangled with…

“Doctor?” he let himself whisper in disbelief, bringing one hand up to tentatively touch his cheek just where the intruder had caressed him, because even though he knew it was impossible to hope, that one word had always been synonymous with impossible hope.

***

_Life._

“Deigned to join us for the bitter end?” In the war room, Cardinal Ollistra looked down at the N-dimensional battlefield laid out before her. “You’re not even supposed to be in here, you know.”

“The latest casualty report,” the monster began, “is in error.”

Cardinal Ollistra did took up at that, lip curled and irritation apparent. “Casualty report?” she snorted. “We’ve got over six-thousand waves of Dalek battleships each tracking Gallifrey through separate vectors in N-Space, the timeline on this entire sector is collapsing, the planetary shields are now permeable thanks to the interstitial vortex fissure canons the Daleks built on Titus III, and you’re worried about a _typographic error_.”

“The Master,” he continued relentlessly, “doesn’t die.”

“It’s the Last Great Time War. _Everything_ dies now. No, more to the point: nothing ever was nor will be. You honestly expect your old school chum survived _that_?”

“Yes.”

“Look,” Cardinal Ollistra said wearily, moving three units of Battle TARDISes in time-space and running another simulation, “if you want to behave like a madman, can you at least do it in the Daleks’ general direction, rather than distracting me?” The simulation concluded with the complete and total destruction of Gallifrey and all the Time Lords. With a frustrated exclamation, she began changing the battlefield parameters again.

“I’ve come,” he insisted, “to warn you. If you recovered his body, I promise you that it isn’t actually dead: undoubtedly another ploy to sneak into the Capital for some nefarious purpose. If you _didn’t_ recover his body, he’s run off in his TARDIS somewhere, and will come down on you now that he’s fooled you into thinking he’s dead. Either way—”

“His _body_ ,” Ollistra said, “was reduced to sub-atomic particles from when the Daleks crushed his TARDIS – and several hundred others of more deserving Time Lords, might I add – in the trans-dimensional gravitational bomb they unleashed once they captured the Cruciform. You are welcome to examine the twelve surviving molecules and his TARDIS’ final death log. Now,” she came around to his side of the Battle Matrix, grabbed him by the elbow, and dragged him out, “if you’re not going to help _win_ this damned war, at least go somewhere where you’re not disturbing those of us who are doing everything we can to _stay alive_.”

He went, not because she ordered him to but because she obviously didn’t have the information he needed. Staying alive wasn’t something that good monsters need concern themselves with, after all.

***

_Afterlife._

The Master did what he always did: he set a trap for the Doctor.

He waited long and patiently for his night-time visitor to return. The Doctor could be like a frightened animal in so many ways: hesitant to approach, easy to startle, and twice-shy once his vulnerable underbelly had been exposed.

The Master waited so long that he’d started to convince himself that he’d hallucinated the Doctor in a wondrous fever-dream. But, as he always had, he persisted.

And then, one sweet, glorious night, the Doctor came again.

The Master had been feigning sleep, waiting coiled and ready for so many nights now. The Doctor, when he entered, didn’t come in through the front door, but from the back of the Master’s suite. Just as the Master had suspected.

The Master feigned sleep yet again, biding his time. He could set off his trap at any moment, of course, but he wanted to see what the Doctor would do. And he hoped, foolishly, that the Doctor would touch him again if he just waited patiently enough. The Doctor didn’t do so, however.

Seconds ticked by to minutes to hours, and then back round again to seconds, because the entire temporal schema of the Matrix was an absurd mess. The Master waited forever and hardly at all, but the Doctor made no move, just watched the Master in the dark.

The Master had just made up his mind to set off his trap anyway – a Doctor in hand was worth two in the bush – when a gravelly voice broke the silence:

“I am aware that you’re awake, you know.”

The words sent shivers down the Master’s spine: the first he’d heard from this Doctor’s lips, but they owned him completely the way every Doctor’s voice did.

He sat up in bed and turned on the lights. The Doctor skulked against the far wall, hands clasped behind his back, his eyes apparently fixed upon a point on the headboard to the left of the Master’s head. He didn’t react visibly to the light. Oh, this Doctor was wary, indeed. The Master would have to play this game with more finesse than usual.

“You,” the Master said carefully, “have a beard.”

The Doctor’s gaze met his suddenly, stunning in its intensity. “I have a _beard_?” he repeated incredulously. “I shouldn’t even _be_ here, a dozen times over! Gallifrey and the whole damned Time War were destroyed, trapped inside a Time Lock. The Matrix was _gone_ , but for some stupid hope that a pocket universe would survive – a pocket universe that, dare I add, should never have been able to make contact with the main universe again. And, even if the Time Lords somehow _did_ find a way out of that – due to your meddling, I have no doubt; they don’t have half the creativity needed to figure it out for themselves, I’m sure – the Matrix would _still_ prohibit the crossing of minds that would allow me to be _here_! All that, and all you can think to ask me about is the _beard_?”

“It is a very nice beard,” the Master said in his defence.

The Doctor ran his hand up to his chin self-consciously. “Yes, well,” his anger seemed to deflate, “thank you.”

“I do like a good beard,” the Master added.

The Doctor snorted, and his stance shifted slightly, looking just the _tiniest_ bit more relaxed, although he continued to maintain what seemed an insurmountable distance. “I never would have guessed,” he said wryly, the merest twitch of a smile playing at the corner of his lips for only a microsecond.

“And, yes,” the Master conceded, “I know all about your fabled end to the Time War, and your ridiculous one-in-a-million shot at sparing Gallifrey, and perhaps – just a little – one of my future incarnations had a bit of fun helping Gallifrey loop back into N-space again. Purely out of vested self-interest, of course.”

“Oh,” the Doctor let out a sarcastic bark of laughter, “of _course_.”

“I _will_ admit to being quite thoroughly impressed at how you got into my mind. Would you care to share your secrets there?”

“I’ll show you mine when you show me yours,” the Doctor snapped back. “ _Future_ incarnations? How the devil – literally, no doubt – did you manage that? I saw the remains of your TARDIS, you know.”

The Master hopped out of bed, feeling quite invigorated by their little verbal bout. He crossed over to his cupboard, threw open the door, and raised a wry eyebrow at the corridor that now stretched out from inside it, seemingly for quite a long way, with occasional sparks from the circuitry the Doctor had used to hold it open.

“Oh, my dearest Doctor,” he said contentedly, “we have _ever_ so much to catch up on.”

***

_Life._

“You! Boy!”

The technician looked up from his electronic clipboard with a start.

“You have the inventory?”

The technician nodded nervously, most likely due to the rumbles of explosions that could be heard off in the distance. Echoing down from the ionosphere, perhaps, if the Daleks were that close. “A-Aren’t you…?” he began.

“I don’t have a name.”

The technician stuttered at that, obviously flustered and frightened and inexperienced.

The monster didn’t have time for people like that, not anymore, not when time itself was ending. “The Master’s TARDIS. Cardinal Ollistra tells me you have some fake remains purporting to be it.”

“Let me just look and see, sir,” the technician said, scrolling through his clipboard. “Uh… The Master, the Master… Yes. Yes, sir. We have it, sir!”

“Well, don’t just stand there gaping! Take me to it. Hurry, hurry! The universe is crumbling around us, or hadn’t you noticed?”

The technician led him through a sea of gravestones: TARDISes split open, distorted almost beyond recognition, half faded from existence. Finally they arrived at an expansive waist-high pallet that contained what looked like a thousand crushed tin cans, each spaced evenly a foot away from the next one over, neat little numbers the only thing to identify them.

The technician consulted his clipboard, ticking his way through the list of numbers until he came to a stop before 527. “This is it, sir!” he announced too loudly, brittle and afraid.

“Well, that’s more than twelve molecules,” the monster groused, and picked up the object. On closer inspection, it wasn’t a can but the cylindrical default form of a hyper-compressed TARDIS. “Now, what trickery…” He reached out with his mind, disgusted by the very obvious trick that the Time Lords had fallen for, the way they always did, the buffoons, and felt…

The ghostly after-echo of the TARDIS’ mind was one he _knew_. He could _feel_ it, in his hearts. Most recently armed and twisted up for war, but before that more mercurial shapes: a column, an old grandfather clock, a circus trailer…

The sound of the TARDIS remains clattering to the pallet shook him. Had he dropped it? He must’ve dropped it. He couldn’t remember doing that, however. Couldn’t remember…

He shook his head, snapped himself out of it, and informed the technician, “It’s just a _trick_ , and you’re all _falling_ for it. Again!”

The technician watched him go sadly.

***

_Afterlife._

“It was just a trick, my ‘death’,” the Master explained in a calming tone. “And you fell for it. Again.”

“I absolutely did _not_ fall for it!” the Doctor blustered. He worked a spanner into the corridor entrance, and it sparked at him defiantly. He sucked on the burned tip of his index finger and gave the Master an impressively fierce glower. “I was on to you to whole time, I’ll have you know.”

The Master sighed and hooked a ground to the entry circuit. “If you’ll try now?” he asked dryly.

The Doctor hooked the spanner back in and activated it. The narrow opening lurched violently once, and then in short, erratic jerks opened the rest of the way.

The two of them held their breaths as the gateway shuddered once and then stabilised, held firmly open for now.

The Master turned to look at the Doctor and quirked one eyebrow up in deliberate invitation.

“What?” the Doctor demanded. “Am I supposed to praise your genius just for being able to jam a door open?”

“Prickly, prickly…” the Master tsked lightly. “Would it really kill you to do so? A few sweet nothings, here and there, that’s all I’ve ever asked for.”

The Doctor let out an incredulous guffaw. “Oh, that’s _all_ ,” he mocked. “That, and the entire known universe, the worship of all its masses, complete and abject servitude…”

“Exactly,” the Master agreed, “just trifles, really. Petty of you to deny me them.”

At that moment, the passage between their minds solidified, and immediately out popped the Fourth Doctor. “Hello,” he grinned at them with mad eyes, and darted right between them in the direction of the Master’s mindscape. “Goodbye!”

The Master sighed. “I really should warn myselves…”

The War Doctor let out a yelp, and the Master turned to watch him rub his backside at where the Nineteenth Mistress had obviously just jabbed it with the tip of her umbrella. She shoved them both aside without a word and hiked up her skirts before ducking low to scuttle down the corridor to the Doctor’s mindscape with single-minded purpose.

“It would seem,” the Doctor said, “that the cat’s out of the bag.”

There was the sound of scuffling down the corridor just out of sight. Undoubtedly a logjam as Doctors and Masters raced to get through the narrow passage in both directions. The Master hoped his incarnations took good advantage of the situation to molest as many Doctors as they could.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, backing away from the cupboard door as his own Third incarnation stormed through, “it would be wise to retreat to the bedroom.”

The Doctor gave him an incredulous look, but backed wisely away as well. “Oh, you can’t be serious! That’s the worst excuse for a come-on I’ve ever heard.”

“Was that a come-on?” the Master retorted. He retreated quickly, the War Doctor on his heels as, in rapid succession, the Tenth, Fifth, Thirteenth, First, and Seventh Doctors all rushed in. “I merely meant that we should sit in this nice, spacious, opulent bedroom on our arses, and repair circuitry in absolute silence.”

“Well, _fine_ ,” the Doctor huffed back. “If that’s what you want, that’s exactly what we’ll do.” He caused his TARDIS’ relativity differentiator to appear in the centre of the floor and moved to undoubtedly do untold damage to its critical functionality.

The Master, peevishly, dematerialised it and had the Matrix replace it with a temporal-inversion detonator.

The Doctor turned to give him a scathing look, shrugged, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver to repair the Master’s choice of projects instead.

The Master sat down beside him rather suddenly, carefully adjusting his trousers to hide his body’s immediate reaction to seeing the Doctor’s hands rebuilding such a deadly weapon.

The Doctor tweaked, and the Master assisted, and the Doctor very astutely avoided the Master’s hands every time they were about to ‘accidentally’ brush on the control panel. Still a cautious Doctor, then, gun-shy after all that he’d suffered in the Time War, left alone with his thoughts for far too long. The Master had a good long daydream about forcing this Doctor beneath him, assaulting the Doctor’s touch-starved senses all at once, taking him rough and fast and hard.

The Doctor, beside him, scoffed in disbelief. “I’d like to see you try,” he threatened.

Sheepishly, the Master reigned in his thoughts. “I wasn’t inside, of course,” he said obliquely, in non-sequitur.

The Doctor paused and looked at him, baffled. “Pardon?”

“My TARDIS,” the Master explained. “I wasn’t inside. Wasn’t anywhere, technically. I obtained an old Chameleon Arch from…certain back channels, sent my TARDIS back to previous coordinates on autopilot, and then used the Arch to…” He trailed off there because it was self-evident and rather humiliating, really.

The Doctor’s jaw clenched, and he glared at the Master. “You absolute bastard! No wonder there was no trace of you. Just the sort of behaviour I’d expect from a first-class coward and traitor.”

“And I, Doctor, missed you, too.” He leaned in too close, into the Doctor’s personal space, and the Doctor scampered back out of range as if burnt. The Master chuckled at his reaction. “Which of us is the true coward, again?” he teased.

“Oh, shut up and help me rewire this timing sensor,” the Doctor returned to their very neutral activity.

“Whatever pleases you,” the Master agreed in smug victory.

***

_Life._

“There, there, old girl.”

His TARDIS had been jittery of late. They all were, point of fact. Most pilots had difficulty even convincing theirs to dematerialise these days. But he and his TARDIS had always had a rapport, and she hummed in welcome at the back of his mind.

“I need to find,” he began, and then found himself at a loss for words, “… _someone_.”

The TARDIS knew him well enough to understand whom he meant.

“You know who,” he agreed. “He’s hiding somewhere. Lying low, setting a trap, up to some mischief. I need to find him.” His voice sounded almost thready to his own ears at that last.

His mind must’ve been, too, because he could feel the TARDIS’ concern radiating back at him.

“I don’t know the coordinates,” he said.

Sorrow and grief echoed back.

“So if you’ll just take me to him.”

Apology and worry.

“I just need…”

Condolences.

He checked the TARDIS controls just in case – the collective will and intelligence of all her sensors and telepathic circuits that spanned across the whole of time and space – to see what she could find of the one person in all of existence that she had known almost as long as him. The coordinates were all set to NULL.

***

_Afterlife._

There were only so many eons of inaction that the Master could endure.

Abruptly – after fifty or so of those eons had passed – the Master reached for the Doctor’s throat, and the Doctor instinctively dodged away, like a skittish feral animal. Fortunately, the Master had timed his attack well, while the Doctor had been absorbed in repairing the circuitry before him, growing so very gradually more complacent and comfortable in the Master’s company, giving the Master just enough advantage to snag his prize.

The Doctor’s TARDIS key dangled between his fingers, its chain still around the Doctor’s neck.

The Doctor frowned at it in surprise, as if he’d actually thought the Master had meant to strangle him instead of merely stealing his property. Then confusion, understanding, and a spark of curiosity: all tiny little micro-expressions that flashed by faster than any but the most practiced and discerning eye could detect.

When it came to watching the Doctor, the Master had made a point to become exceptionally practiced and discerning over the centuries.

The Doctor finally spoke, completely composed, sounding as annoyed as ever, as if none of the rest of those emotions had ever existed. “Oh no, you don’t,” he groused. “What do you want with my TARDIS, anyway?”

The Master pulled the chain up and out from around the Doctor’s neck, slowly and carefully. No sudden movements. Soothing his enraged beast. “I’m headed for the Vredine Quadrant,” he stated unhelpfully.

The Doctor blinked. Another lightning-fast kaleidoscope of thoughts and feelings vanished in a flash. “Why do you want to go to the Vredine Quadrant?” he asked.

The Master succeeded in pulling the TARDIS key free of the Doctor’s neck. Before he could step away, though, the Doctor caught his wrist in an iron grip. A shiver of excitement raced down the Master’s spine at actual skin-to-skin contact after all this time. Given the Doctor’s brief startled expression, he’d undoubtedly felt the same thing.

“To conquer Psiltis Prime,” the Master answered simply, and stepped away.

The Doctor, still shocked at his reaction to their contact, let his fingers slip off the Master’s wrist. “Why Psiltis Prime?” he demanded.

“Because,” the Master explained patiently, “it has both a weak-minded absolute monarch, and extensive mines of carzanium.”

The Doctor scoffed. “What possible use could carzanium be to you?”

The Master turned and headed for the Doctor’s TARDIS. The Doctor seemed torn as to whether to follow. “The native populace of the planet Alvis IX carve their sun-sacrifices to the great goddess Batakala solely from carzanium,” he explained.

The Doctor frowned and took two quick steps to catch him up at the TARDIS door. “And why would _you_ care about sacrifices to the great goddess Batakala?”

“Because I mean to usurp their High Priest and One True Leader, and the Alvians are far less susceptible to telepathic manipulation than the Psiltines, alas.”

“Well, great. We’re back to where we started!” the Doctor growled with frustration. “Why _Alvis IX_ , then?”

“Because, with their solar-ray flux-inhibition technology, I’ll be able to conquer the entire Vredine Quadrant all from within one convenient base of operations.” The Master sighed. “Honestly, Doctor, you used to be quicker on the uptake than this. Out of practice due to the War?”

The Doctor brushed the question aside like a pesky insect. “But what _good_ can it possibly do you to conquer the Vredine Quadrant from within?” he demanded.

“Good?” the Master repeated. “What a very strange word to use. I mean to do absolutely no _good_ whatsoever. I plan to subjugate the peoples of every world, enslave them into building me an even greater armada, and use up all their resources in my plan to conquer the remaining three quadrants of the Yltong Galaxy.”

“But,” the Doctor protested in disbelief, and gestured to the universe-pendant around the Master’s neck, “you can do all that _now_ , from out here, without the slightest bit of effort! Why would you _bother_?”

The Master looked at the Doctor and said, with dead-pan seriousness, “Fun.”

The Doctor gaped him in really a rather satisfying way.

The Master pushed open the door to the TARDIS and stepped inside. “You do remember _fun_ , don’t you, Doctor?”

The Doctor continued to stand there as if he didn’t have the vaguest idea what to say or do.

The Master sighed and drummed his fingers on the TARDIS door impatiently. “ _Well_?” he demanded.

“Well, what?” The Doctor finally seemed to have snapped from his stupor.

“Well, are you going to come along to thwart me or not?”

The Doctor blinked, frowned, and then roughly pushed past him into the TARDIS. “Of _course_ I’m going to thwart you, you irredeemable megalomaniac,” he grumbled under his breath.

The Master smiled to himself behind the Doctor’s turned back and felt as though his hearts were going to beat straight out of his chest.

***

_Life._

The monster passed the casualty list again, by sheer chance, on his way back.

There was another young soldier there now. Or maybe it was the same one, and days had passed. He wasn’t quite sure which anymore.

“You,” he said, pausing, “what’s your name?”

“Trivalecrinistricinaki,” the soldier said, blinking, looking up from his tears.

The monster sighed. Sometimes, he didn’t know why he bothered to ask. “What’s wrong with you, then?” he demanded.

The other Time Lord blinked at him a few more times, cheeks stained wet, and then red-hot rage shrouded his face. “What’s wrong with _me_?” he demanded. “What do you _think_ is wrong with me, you callous prick! Did you somehow _miss_ that there’s a war going on? That people – good, honest people, who never even wanted to fight in the first place – are _dying_ every day? Don’t you _care_?! What’s wrong with me… What’s wrong with _you_ , you heartless monster!”

The monster flinched back, stunned, because he’d known what he was all along, of course. But that was what _he_ said about himself. He’d never heard confirmation of it from anyone else, not so bluntly.

Something about his reaction must’ve given him away, because the other Time Lord’s face crumpled then. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding a bit stunned that he, a _Time Lord_ , had expressed actual emotion so violently. “I didn’t know what I was saying. I just snapped. It’s just that… She was…” He burst out into tears again.

The monster wanted to run, but some force beyond his comprehension compelled him to stay. “You…loved her?” he ventured cautiously, placing one hand uncomfortably but tentatively upon the other man’s shoulder in a brief pat, that might have been reassurance a lifetime or two ago.

The other Time Lord nodded with a ragged intake of breath. “She was… We were to be married. I mean, it probably would’ve been regenerations from now, with the War going on. But the thought that, one day… It was that one bit of _hope_ kept me going, you know? That somewhere, somehow, there was just a glimmer of potential happiness at the end of all this.” He looked up to where the sky had been quaking now for…hours? Days? Weeks?

“Hope,” the monster rolled the word about in his mouth, as if he’d never heard it before and wasn’t quite sure he liked the taste of it.

“Silly of me, I know,” the other Time Lord agreed, wiped his cheeks, and took up his staser once more. “Good luck,” he told the monster bravely, and raced in the direction of the southeast gate.

“Silly,” the monster considered slowly, speaking to no one in particular, “isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” In fact, a very, _very_ silly idea had just popped into his head.

***

_Afterlife._

The remains of the psychic-conversion engine sparked pathetically.

As each circuit blew, another battalion of psionic temporal-reduction manta-eels faded back into the interspace between dimensions.

At the door to the throne room, the bangs from the battering ram the rebels were using to besiege the capital finally began to strain the thoraxium alloys in the doorframe.

The Master sat in the middle of the floor – because his quite comfy throne had been shattered to bits when one of his viperian-mutant guards had thrown it through the neutron reactor at the realisation that the Master had been using him all along and would never restore him to his rightful body – and sulked.

Next to him, the Doctor leaned back against the fused control panel and munched contentedly on a banana.

“Oh, don’t look so pleased with yourself,” the Master grumbled.

The Doctor fixed him with a deliberately beatific smile that actually did something to lighten the crags in his face and put a touch of warmth and mirth to the crinkles around his eyes. The Master felt his pulses race at that one perfect moment. Then, the Doctor looked away again and finished eating his banana.

“You might at least have left my crown,” the Master pouted.

“That thing”—the Doctor gestured in the direction of the slag of metal against the far wall, only the tip of one of its ruby-tipped solid-gold feathers still unscathed—“was an abomination against peace, liberty, and sensible hat fashion.”

“You say that like it’s a _bad_ thing.”

The Doctor smirked down at him.

The door gave as the battering ram finally burst its hinges. The rebels caught sight of their High Priest and One True Leader sitting on the floor in a huff, and immediately began crying for his blood.

At that, the Master finally rose to his feet. “That, my dear,” he informed the Doctor, “is our cue to escape.”

“Your cue, you mean,” the Doctor chuckled. “I suspect they plan to throw _me_ a parade.”

“You act as though a parade would not be as much an anathema to you, as torture and execution would be to me,” the Master retorted.

The Doctor nodded to him in recognition of a point well scored. “Touché.”

“Coming, then?” The Master opened the TARDIS door and swept his arm out to politely offer to let the Doctor enter before him.

“Don’t mind if I do,” the Doctor agreed and stepped inside. “Just what are you planning to conquer next?” he asked, sounding genuinely excited at the prospect, cheeks flushed with exhilaration that the Master hadn’t seen from him in ages. The joy made him look at least half a millennium younger. “And this time don’t go so easy on me.”

The Master shut the door against the enraged screams of the Alvian populace and a sudden barrage of neural-asphyxiation spears. “Anywhere you like, my dear,” he promised. “Anywhere at all.”

***

_Life._

“Hello, old friend,” Engin said, when he saw who had entered the Matrix Chamber. “I hadn’t expected to see you here again.”

The door closed automatically behind him. It was strangely quiet here, in the emergency shelter beneath the Panopticon, shielded from even the sound of bombardment.

“But then,” Engin considered, “I probably should have. I do get the oddest visitors these days. Even the haughtiest of Councillors wants to know that their child was archived successfully, and that the biodata input systems aren’t overloaded.”

“And are they?”

Engin laughed wryly, and then coughed. He was looking very old and frail these days. He must have been in his final regeneration now, and near to the end of it, it seemed. Not a bad stage of lives to be in during the final days of the War, all things told: better to end it all after thirteen lives fully lived.

“My systems,” Engin admitted, “are possibly the only thing on Gallifrey _not_ strained to the breaking point. The dead stream in seamlessly, the way they always have done.”

The monster nodded at that, peered at one of the consoles, and could not think of a thing to say.

“I had another old ‘friend’ come through the other day,” Engin added astutely.

“Oh?”

“You remember him, of course. Hacked into this very Matrix on more than one occasion. Did you know that his biodata has _sixteen_ separate partitions for regenerations? That many lives isn’t supposed to be possible, but your old friend always had a talent for the impossible, didn’t he?”

The monster felt his hearts plummet in a sickening feeling that no _true_ monster could ever experience. “He’s here, then?” he asked in almost a whisper. “ _All_ of him?”

“Every last moment.” Engin patted the console almost affectionately. “Would you…like to see?”

The word “no” choked in the monster’s throat, and a desperate “ _yes_ ” came out instead.

Engin gestured to the seat beside him and then turned to pull up the relevant record.

And there the Master was. Cold, isolated, sterile. Nothing but thoughts and memories wrapped within circuitry. The monster’s hand reached out to touch the monitor, almost of its own accord, to brush over the coordinates of the data storage location, and by the time he pulled it back, he wasn’t a monster any more.

“Where…?” the ex-monster asked slowly. “When I die, where will I go?”

Engin looked that up quickly enough as well, and kindly did not comment. Databanks away, far on the other side of the Matrix.

“No,” the ex-monster shook his head, as if slowly awakening from a dream, “I want to be right _there_.” He tapped the side of the Master’s biodata sharply with one knuckle.

Engin paused and considered the request. “That’s…possible,” he finally conceded. “The code would even be quite simple. An insert-into-select, a join…”

“You know how to do it?” And, yes, there was that treacherous glimmer, that _hope_ that he’d nearly forgotten. Because it turned out that he absolutely did have a _someone_ after all, and he was not going to let this damned foolish War keep them apart, come hell or high water.

“I do,” Engin agreed, “and I’ll do it, but…”

“Why is there always a ‘but’?”

“The access to make Matrix structural changes requires High Council permission.”

With his mad, absolutely ridiculous plan already in place, there was nothing to say to that but to scoff at the triviality of _that_ obstacle.

***

_Afterlife._

The Doctor let out a whoop of laughter as they finally exited the TARDIS, back into the Master’s room in the Matrix.

“If you could’ve seen your _face_ ,” he crowed, “when the Orinquin Grandiose Slug told you that you needed to _marry_ him!”

The Master flicked off the last bit of gastropod mucus from his sleeve and glared at the Doctor, in that murderous and loving way that he always had done. “That,” he informed the Doctor with his nose held up in the air primly, “was a particularly low blow, even for you.”

“Me?” the Doctor said in the least convincing attempt at innocence the Master had ever seen. “He’s the one who insisted!”

“After _you_ deliberately tricked me into choosing the _fourteenth_ path to ultimate supremacy, knowing very well what the rituals entailed.”

“Well,” the Doctor faked modesty just about as well as he faked innocence, “it’s just that you looked ever so fetching in nothing but a loincloth and floral wreaths, covered in slime.”

“Did I?” asked the Master, and stepped close, so close that he could feel the heat of the Doctor’s breath on his neck. “Did I, _really_?” he purred low against the Doctor’s ear.

The Doctor’s throat tensed and released – a gulp – but he didn’t step away, for once. “Defeated,” he continued their banter but in a darker tone this time, as if it was _finally_ actually leading them somewhere, “is a very good look on you.”

“One you’ve made me wear many a time,” the Master agreed. Slowly, carefully, he reached out with one hand and splayed it across the small of the Doctor’s back.

The Doctor’s body shuddered once beneath his palm, but then the Doctor leaned in so that their chests brushed. His hand came up to clutch the Master’s shoulder, just this side of bruising.

There was a good chance, the Master acknowledged, that they were about to fight again. But then there was also that infinitesimal chance that had haunted him throughout all his lives that just _maybe_ this time they’d do something else instead. He felt his knees go weak at the thought, old fool that he was.

The Doctor, apparently still high on the elation of thoroughly defeating the Master repeatedly in every way imaginable, snorted against the Master’s cheek. “Would you _really_ like me to tell you how we came to be like this, minds linked in the Matrix?” he asked cruelly.

The Master wanted nothing more in all the universe. No, that wasn’t entirely true: what he _wanted_ was for the answer to be what he hoped it was. He knew, though, that he never got what he hoped for. The Doctor was taunting him. The real explanation would be that this was all a ploy: the Doctor still alive, and this afterlife was all a trick to ply needed intelligence from his memory banks in order to win the War. Or perhaps it was a mere technicality, a glitch: what with the restrictions of War, they’d had to compress the Matrix databanks, and this was a random side-effect. Or that none of this was real, and the Master had finally gone completely mad, and he’d imagined all of this because never, in all his lives, would the Doctor _ever_ …

“I asked for you,” the Doctor said in a rumble barely above a whisper. “No, more than that, I _petitioned_ for you.”

The Master trembled in response. No, this was _too_ cruel! Surely, the Doctor wouldn’t do this to him, give him everything and then take it away and…

“Oh, hush now,” the Doctor’s voice was gruff in its usual mildly irritated sort of way, but not unkind. “You always did have a flair for the melodramatic.”

The Master couldn’t disagree with that. Stupidly, he allowed himself to hope just a little.

“Do you want to hear that I begged for you?” the Doctor continued, almost casually, running his hand down the line to the Master’s sleeve, eyes following his hand’s motion as if fascinated by it. “I didn’t, you know,” he countered sharply. “No, instead I _commanded_ that they give you to me, the way they always should have done.”

The Master felt himself fall again – stupid, stupid, _stupid_ – the way he always did for every Doctor, every incarnation, no matter how much he tried to deny himself or convince himself otherwise.

“And now,” the Doctor concluded, “they’ve given you to me, forever.”

The Master fought his way up, through the cloying emotions that threatened to overcome him, enough to demand sceptically, “And how, exactly, did you convince them to do _that_?”

***

_Life._

“Who dares—?”

He didn’t recognise the pompous Councillor who’d been speechifying when he’d burst into the Council chambers. He didn’t care, either.

“I demand audience!” he announced with a bit of that old indomitable spirit that had saved countless worlds and lives, and condemned countless more.

Cardinal Ollistra’s eyebrows rose. “Who, exactly,” she asked pettily, “demands audience?”

A pause, and then he breathed deep and said, “The Doctor demands audience.”

Ollistra’s smirk fell, and she looked at him almost sympathetically. Two of the other Councillors, who knew of his recent eponymic difficulties, exchanged a curious look. Behind them, Engin slipped into his seat and gave the Doctor a nod. There were only thirteen Councillors seated at the moment; if he assumed those four would all vote in his favour, he only needed to win three more.

The Doctor stared back at them resolutely. “You want the Doctor,” he informed them all, “to win you this War. Instead, up until now, all you’ve had is the monster you created of him.”

That generated more murmurs.

“Are you _blackmailing_ us?” one of the Arcalian Cardinals demanded.

“No,” the Doctor assured him, “merely… _motivating_ you.”

“Very well, Lord Doctor.” The High Chancellor was seated as head of the Council, because presumably the Lord President had somewhere more important to be. That could only help the Doctor’s case, given his rather dicey relationship with Rasillon. On the other hand, the High Chancellor was currently occupying a particularly stuffy-looking regeneration, who looked rather as if he’d perennially swallowed a lemon, so that was probably a point against. “State your petition. And please be _quick_ about it. We have a War to fight, after all.”

“My petition is this: all the resources at my disposal to win your War, in exchange for the one-time migration of one data silo in the Matrix between databanks.”

_Everyone_ on the Council, aside from Engin, looked perplexed at this. After all, he was the _Doctor_. He was supposed to make _unreasonable_ demands.

“Ahem,” the High Chancellor said at last. “May I ask _whose_ data silo? After all, it would hard be politic to move someone’s biodata without their express permission…”

He might’ve known that they would immediately throw up bureaucratic red-tape. “My own biodata. And,” he added wryly, “in case it’s not obvious enough, I give my permission. _Expressly_.”

That earned him a few lips twitches.

“Where, then,” the High Chancellor continued, shrewd in that infuriating way that only Prydonians could be, “do you propose to move your biodata _to_?”

This would’ve been easier if they hadn’t asked that. The Doctor could lie, of course, or fib a little, or obfuscate, or mislead. Instead, he told the absolute truth because it was the end of everything, and who gave a damn? “I want it moved directly adjacent to the Master’s biodata.”

_That_ earned him some shocked exclamations, and at least one scandalised look. The rumour mill around him and the Master was still going strong, then, along with the alarm their bond had always caused on Gallifrey. Good, let them know _exactly_ what they were voting for.

The High Chancellor had turned pale, like the very thought of the two of them side-by-side was enough to give him a fit of the vapours. “This is quite unheard of!” he insisted. “The Matrix is meant to—”

“I don’t care what it’s meant for,” the Doctor insisted. “Your edicts over the centuries have governed our actions more than enough. You fear the two of us together? As well you should: you’ve seen the complete chaos the two of us are capable of inflicting upon everything unfortunate enough to be in our vicinity.”

“And this is supposed to _encourage_ us to support your blasphemous proposal?” one of the Councillors huffed.

The Doctor grinned at him unpleasantly. “If you think we’re chaos together, how much worse are we apart? Can you imagine it? Right now, the Master is alone, in the Matrix. Bored. Just what do you think he’ll do with that? Do you think you’re safe, that he won’t – in all of eternity – figure out a way to escape, to find his way to where he doesn’t belong?”

“That’s not possible,” the High Chancellor insisted. “Councillor Engin?”

“That should not be possible,” Engin agreed, and the High Chancellor’s chest puffed up with arrogant satisfaction for one moment, “but this is, after all, _the Master_ we’re speaking of.”

The High Chancellor immediately deflated.

The Doctor cut in. “You see? He’s wreaked havoc through the Matrix more than enough to know his way about. When he awakes and finds himself alone, what do you think he’ll do: sit in his databank and _play nice_ , or will he immediately decide that it’s a grand idea to seek _me_ out?” Stunned silence. “I trust you have _met_ the man,” the Doctor couldn’t help but tease. “That wasn’t a trick question. And, if you have met him, you know that he’ll have no compunction about ripping everyone _else’s_ databanks to shreds in his hunt for me. Imagine, it will be exactly like what he did to _this_ universe, only in that peaceful, tranquil afterlife you’ve all set up for yourselves. Oh, I _do_ hope none of you have the misfortune to be stored inconveniently on the current path between his databanks and mine. That would be…quite fatal, I should think.”

“Are you _threatening_ us?” the High Chancellor demanded with the beginnings of a snarl. Apparently, the man was capable of some emotion after all.

“Oh, not at all,” the Doctor said in a tone that made it perfectly clear that that was exactly what he was doing. “Merely pointing out the nature of the monsters you house. How, despite your own edicts, how you’ve _interfered_ in every way imaginable, today that’s all going to end. Because you have two problems: him, ready to claw you apart from the inside, and me, whom you desperately need to save you from the outside. And all it will take to resolve both issues neatly is for you to allow one of your pointless rules to be bent, just once, just a little.”

At that, several of the Councillors went quiet, as if considering his request carefully.

“And what,” the High Chancellor sputtered, obviously even more uptight than the Doctor had given him credit for, “do you and the Master propose to _do_ together in the Matrix?”

“I propose,” the Doctor announced clearly and calmly to the assembled High Council, “to bugger him.” And couldn’t help but feel a giddy little thrill just at having said it on the official record.

One of the Councillors near the back very nearly fainted at the impropriety of _that_. It was quite satisfying.

“It’s your own fault, you know,” the Doctor continued. “If you’d read your literature, you’d know that once you create a monster, it will inevitably demand to be given a mate.” The reference undoubtedly went over all their heads, but the Doctor didn’t care. “And, if you don’t want to reward me, I’m sure enough of you are spiteful and ignorant enough to think that this would at least be punishment for _him_.”

The High Council voted 11-to-2 in his favour. Even the Doctor wasn’t sure afterwards which of his arguments had convinced them, or whether they’d all just given up caring anymore.

***

_Afterlife._

“Presumptuous of you,” the Master insisted haughtily, like there was even the remotest chance that he would be hard-to-get.

The Doctor chuckled and rested his free hand firmly on the Master’s hip. “‘I’ll more than presume by the time I’m done with you!’” he announced with a hint of mockery. “Isn’t that the way this sort of menacing goes? I’ll admit, it’s more your forte, but I’m willing to try my hand at it.” He stepped into the Master then, causing the Master to stagger backwards. “If you’d like, that is.”

The Master gulped, took another stumbling step back, and his legs collided with the bed. It caught him off guard, and his knees gave out as he sat down a bit too quickly to play the action off as intentional. The Doctor towered over him now, the way he so often had over the eons, and his hands came up to trail through the Master’s hair, gently at first but then more firmly, tugging the Master’s head into the ideal angle, and then—

The Master had dreamt of this: the Doctor’s lips on his, the Doctor’s hands on his body, the Doctor’s mind caressing his possessively, taking him over from the inside out. It had only taken centuries of interminable run-around and their own deaths, for his dream to finally come true.

“Old fools,” the Doctor whispered against the Master’s mouth and pushed him back onto the bed.

The Master went embarrassingly easily, unable to hide his eagerness. “We certainly are,” he agreed.

The Doctor crawled on top of him, and at that point both their clothes vanished, which was an intriguing aspect of the Matrix-construct environment that the Master had not considered properly up until that point.

“ _Very_ presumptuous,” the Master panted out approvingly against the Doctor’s lips.

“Yes, well,” the Doctor conceded in a low growl, “I had a particularly magnificent monster upon which to base myself.”

The Master felt his stupid hearts catch in his chest. He did his level best to continue with some semblance of decorum. “Oh, a presumptuous monster, was he?”

A smile flickered over the Doctor’s lips as he studied the Master’s expression knowingly; semblance not fully achieved then. “The worst,” the Doctor said fondly. “He has a terrible penchant for intruding himself into perfectly legitimate regimes and then running to me in need of rescue when his unreliable allies inevitably turn against him. It’s thrown a wrench in more than one planned peaceful vacation, let me tell you.”

“How unforgivably cheeky.” The Master sighed at the feel of the _Doctor’s_ beard tickling _him_ , as the Doctor kissed his way down his neck to his collarbone. “Surely, such a monster deserves to be punished.”

The Doctor paused his lips inches above the Master’s right nipple. “Oh, you think so, do you?” His voice was warm with mirth, which shouldn’t have made the Master anywhere near as hard as it did. “And how would you recommend punishing such complete villainy?” His mouth enclosed the nipple, wet and hot, that tongue as filthy and talented as the Master had always known it would be.

The Master fought back the rapturous moan that threatened to escape his lips. “Upon careful consideration,” he said with absolutely no semblance of decorum at all anymore, “I feel that your proposal to the High Council was a just punishment.”

“Do you now?” The Doctor’s eyebrows rose, and his hand came to rest loosely around the base of the Master’s jutting erection.

“Y-Yes,” the Master stuttered out, and shut his eyes tight when the Doctor gave his cock a playful squeeze. “A good buggery seems right in order for a monster like that.”

“Of course,” the Doctor agreed. “Truly a terrible punishment, indeed. I’m amazed the High Council condoned such base barbarism.” He resettled them again, rolling them both onto their sides face to face, and guided the Master’s thigh up so that it bracketed his hip.

“A scandalous fate, indeed. But, in war, needs must,” the Master said, and allowed it all to happen just as the Doctor dictated, feeling rather helpless at how _close_ the Doctor was to giving him what he’d always wanted – no, _needed_ – from him. Any other time, he might have recoiled at playing so passive a part for any Doctor, but _this_ Doctor, now, so alone and so wary, needed this just as much as he did. “Only fitting for a complete monster.”

“You know what?” the Doctor said, the tip of one slicked-up finger now teasing the Master’s entrance. “I feel exactly the same way.” The sweetest hint of pressure, and then the Doctor pushed his finger inside him, up to the second knuckle all in one go, the absolute bastard.

The Master moaned at the intrusion, and might have shouted out some embarrassing truths besides. Thankfully, the Doctor gave up his teasing at that point, going silent and dark-eyed as he stretched out the Master, one finger then two, gaze flicking hungrily towards any hitch in the Master’s chest, any writhe of his hips, any fervent whispers from his lips, almost as if this Doctor was starved for connection.

The Master gave him what he wanted, just this once. Let his gasps echo through the silence of the bedroom, and watched the hope and relief flare in the Doctor’s eyes at each one. So withdrawn and aloof, this Doctor, yet in so many ways the neediest of them all…

The Master held out a hand in offering, and a shiver wracked through the Doctor’s body when he took it, nestled himself more comfortably into place between the Master’s legs, let his fingers slip free from the Master’s body.

With both hands now, the Master guided the Doctor onto him, into him. The tip of the Doctor’s cock was slippery with want and slid aside on the first try, but the Master palmed it patiently, guided it back to his opening again, and on the second try, the Doctor pierced him with a ragged groan.

In a younger body, the Master would have wrapped his legs around the Doctor at this juncture, forced him deeper. But, alas, this never had been the most flexible of regenerations, and he didn’t feel particularly up to anything so vigorous. Instead, he kept his fist around the Doctor’s base, led him in deeper.

The Doctor, for his part, seemed to have gone entirely useless, planting his forehead against the Master’s collarbone and panting harshly.

Finally, with a shimmy of his hips, the Master succeeded in getting the Doctor fully inside. The Master’s hand moved to hold the Doctor’s arse close instead, trapping him in place. They stayed locked like that for some time, conjoined at last, while the Doctor trembled as if even this was too much.

After what seemed like an interminable wait, the Doctor’s lips moved against the Master’s chest. Their breaths sounded sharp and ragged, hot against each other in the cool of the bedroom, as they rocked slowly against each other.

If the Master had ever stopped to consider what sex with the Doctor might be like (which, of course, he _had_ , copiously, in every last one of his lives), ‘silent’ would not have been the first word to come to mind. With this Doctor, though, who shivered in his arms and clutched him tightly as if he couldn’t properly believe the Master was really _there_ , the Master understood it.

This was vindication and absolution and condemnation all at once, and the Time War had torn apart this Doctor’s spirit enough that the Master was willing to give him this. Their position made it easy enough for the Master to tuck the Doctor’s head into the nook beneath his chin and nuzzle into his hairline.

The Doctor shivered again at being surrounded so intimately. He didn’t last long. It wasn’t a particularly ambitious coupling, over far too soon and without the rich, subtle layers of power-play they could develop into it over time, but it was a start, and with this particular Doctor, that was an accomplishment in and of itself.

The Master refused to let the Doctor escape once he’d pulled out of the Master’s body. Instead, he used his superior size and strength (and, oh, didn’t that make for a lovely change?) to keep the Doctor close and trapped, while the Master rutted against the jut of the Doctor’s hipbone.

The Master rolled them as he frotted the Doctor, sunk his fingers into the hair at the back of the Doctor’s neck to yank his head back roughly and force him to meet the Master’s eyes. The Doctor might have wanted _his_ first orgasm between the two of them to be hidden and private, but the Master was absolutely going to make the Doctor see exactly what he had unleashed.

The Doctor looked startled at first at the sudden reminder of the viciousness the Master was capable of, but then the Doctor’s expression turned defiant, and, oh, _that_ was the expression the Master needed to see on the Doctor’s face to finally push himself over the edge.

The Doctor looked a bit lost and more than overwhelmed at the sight of the Master coming in his arms. Lovely, really.

After it was over, the Doctor pieced himself back together silently, although the occasional hum of some jaunty tune sounded under his breath as he dressed, until he suddenly caught himself at it and stopped. So reluctant to be pleased, this contrary Doctor, hesitant to accept even scraps of comfort or humanity. He’d believed his own lies for far too long.

Fortunately, however, the Master had even longer to draw him out, and wouldn’t that just be the sweetest victory ever?

He stretched and crawled out of bed, refreshed by their interlude, and snatched up the Doctor’s TARDIS key from the nightstand before the Doctor could put the chain back around his neck.

“Oh, where are you going _now_?” the Doctor grumbled half-heartedly. His voice broke on the initial words, though, the first he’d spoken since their coupling, as if some lingering emotion had been lodged in his throat and needed to be purged.

The Master could _definitely_ work with that. “To the Xilandrian Cluster,” he answered with teasing lilt, materialised his clothes anew, and headed for the TARDIS.

“What on Gallifrey do you want with—?” the Doctor began, stopped midway, and gave the Master a long-suffering look. “Fine, fine,” he agreed. “Let’s go. Whatever your plan of universal domination is, it won’t work this time, either, you irreparable scoundrel.”

“Let’s,” the Master agreed jauntily.

It was the end, but, in so many ways, it was also the beginning.


End file.
